


The Storms of Ragnarok

by maracolleenbanks



Category: Dreamwalkers Universe
Genre: Gen, Mars (Dreamwalkers), Ouroboros (Dreamwalkers), Ragnarok (Dreamwalkers)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:43:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15336135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maracolleenbanks/pseuds/maracolleenbanks
Summary: Veterans Yvete and Urs take a risk when they choose to go on a quest on the Plains of Ragnarok with newbie Benji.





	The Storms of Ragnarok

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Dreamwalkers Universe](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/404343) by Siren Tycho and Mara Colleen Banks. 



Brown clouds curdled in an orange sky and darkened into an ominous shade of green. 

“That doesn’t look good,” Yvete said, gesturing in the direction of the storm. 

“Rain?” asked Benji.

Yvete rolled her eyes. 

Benji had been one of Pym’s students before he came to Mars and joined their party. From what she could tell, he believed his lost planet had been some kind of paradise where the worst thing that happened was rain. He was young, barely out of adolescence, and cheerfully shared with everyone he met that he had never been more than fifty miles from home when he’d accidentally found himself in Limbo with a rescue party of Valkyr who had gone to the lost planet (and failed) to reason Pym into going back to Pandemonium. How Benji came to be so good with a gun, Yvete couldn’t understand, but he was already the best shot on their Mars. It was the only reason she allowed him anywhere near her on the Plains of Ragnarok. 

“It doesn’t rain on Ragnarok,” Urs said, drawing his sword. “It storms.” 

Urs was old fashioned. He refused to carry a gun and insisted on engaging only in close combat. He thought that fighting from a distance wasn’t sporting. Yvete would have argued that no one expects you to be sporting when you’re fighting somebody’s lung cancer, but there were times when close combat was the only option, and she wasn’t about to talk herself out of a teammate who was capable of dealing with it.

“I’ve always liked thunderstorms,” Benji said. “My mom always said thunderstorms happened when Thor was inspired and hammering on something in his workshop.” 

“By the way that thing is gathering, I bet Thor would be really inspired,” Yvete said.

“But not to arts and crafts,” said Urs.

“How do you know who Thor is, Benji?” Yvete asked. 

“Everyone knows who Thor is,” Benji said. “He’s the Norse god of thunder. They make movies about him and everything.”

“What’s Norse?” asked Urs. “Is that the word for Saturn where you come from? Thor’s a god of Saturn in my sky.”

“I don’t think so,” Benji said, “unless Saturn is near Scandinavia.” 

A thin finger with a sharp claw poked out of the cloud, and Benji went green. The wind rose quickly, whipping his hair out of the leather thong he used to tie it back. He held a hand over his face to keep his hair out of his eyes and wished he had something to tie over his nose and mouth, but his shirt was made of leather—wise if he got into a fight but horrible for breathing through. Nothing grew in Ragnarok, and, as the storm gathered strength, dust rose from the barren plain to meet the tornado. Despite his best efforts, his hair and the sand beat his eyes, drawing tears that he wiped away frantically until he saw that the others’ eyes were watering, too.

“Do you think it’s alive?” Yvete asked.

Benji snorted at the thought of a storm monster, but Urs looked grave, studying the storm as if he took the question seriously. 

“I don’t think so,” he said. “It’s possible someone’s dreamed of a living tornado, but I think most people have nightmares and trauma from regular old tornados. We should to seek shelter. There is no dishonor in letting a storm blow itself out, even on the Plains of Ragnarok. If we get through it without waking up or dying, that’s usually the end of the thing.”

Benji looked around wildly for shelter.

“I see something!” he said, pointing to a tower that was just barely visible in pauses between gusts of wind.

The tower was behind them, away from the tornado. He didn’t wait long enough for the others to decide if they were joining him. He ran toward the tower without looking back. A few moments later, he heard the heavy stomping boots of Urs beside him and Yvete not far behind taking two steps for every one of theirs to keep up on her shorter legs. 

As they ran, the tower came into focus. It was as if someone had removed the bell tower from a plain white church with a square biscuit cutter and sloppily pasted on two walls of white siding in the place where the rest of the church had been. In the belfry, the storm caught the bell rope and played the bell in irregular rhythm.

“I don’t like the looks of that,” Yvete said. 

“It’ll be a nightmare wherever we go,” Urs said. 

“I say we just dream walk out of here,” Benji said.

“And leave the fight for someone else?” Urs asked. “No, someone has to go through the nightmare in order for it to die, and I’d rather it’d be me. I know I can handle myself in a storm. You’re welcome to jump ship, if you don’t think you can’t handle it.”

His eyes twinkled with the challenge. 

Yvete glared at him for pressuring Benji and lunged for the door. “There had better be a basement in there is all I’ve got to say, old man.”

“There’s got to be an out, doesn’t there?” Benji asked, following Yvete through the door. 

“I don’t know what kind of nightmares you’re having,” Yvete said.

“There’s always an out in my nightmares,” Benji muttered to himself.

Urs struggled against the wind to close the door and bolted it behind them. They were in a small room of bare boards with dusty rafters high above their heads. There was only one closed door, aside from the one they’d just entered. The building creaked ominously but Benji held up his hand in protest when Urs and Yvete stepped toward the door.

“What if there’s someone else out there?” Benji asked. 

“There won’t be,” Urs said and shouldered him aside, “not anyone we’d want to save.”

“Are you sure?” Benji asked.

“Certain,” Urs said and bent down to study the doorknob. The storm was getting closer, and he had to raise his voice to a yell to be heard. “That’s how this place works. These are our monsters. If someone else comes here to fight monsters, they’ll end up facing something else.”

“Unless we fail or leave,” Yvete said.

“Unless we fail or leave,” Urs agreed.

“So, let’s not,” Benji said and reached for the doorknob.

Urs swatted his hand away. “Not so fast. This is a nightmare, remember? There are all kinds of nightmares people can have about closed doors.”

“Are they worse than the ones about getting sucked into tornados?” Yvete asked. “I’m pretty sure that one tops my list.”

“This isn’t some ordinary church tower,” Urs said. He took a small metal bar out of his pocket and poked at the doorknob with it and then put his ear to the door and tapped it with the metal bar. “It wouldn’t be on the Plains of Ragnarok if it was. Until we understand why this is here I’m treating everything as if it’s got some fatal disease.”

“I just hope this isn’t one of those meta nightmares, and your paranoia is the nightmare,” Yvete said.

“That would be ironic,” Benji said. “No one told me the Plains of Ragnarok had a sense of humor.”

“They don’t,” Urs said. “Irony isn’t humor.”

Satisfied that the door wasn’t obviously trapped, he tried the handle. 

“Of course,” he said. “It’s locked.”

“How obvious,” Benji said. 

“It’s the obvious nightmares that are the worst,” Yvete said. “It means you can see the whole thing coming, but you can’t do anything about it.”

“Don’t forget that this thing wasn’t designed for us,” Urs said. ”Anybody good at picking locks?”

Benji and Yvete shook their heads. 

“Shoulders it is, then,” Yvete said.

They counted to three to time their blows and ran sidelong together into the door. The bell rang in protest, but the door didn’t budge. Outside, the storm attacked the door they’d just come through like a wild animal. At least, Benji hoped it was the storm.

“This isn’t actually as bad as it looks,” Urs said. “I’d bet my hat this dream was calibrated for a ninety-eight pound church mouse. It never saw the three of us coming, so all we need is some muscle. On three again.”

They hit the door with fresh determination, but it still didn’t budge.

Yvete rattled the doorknob in frustration, and the door swung open easily.

“You idiot,” she said. “It was just stuck.”

Urs marched through the door red faced muttering curses into a room that was nearly identical to the one they’d left except that there was a window. Benji went to the window and swooned. 

“We entered this thing at ground level, and now we have to be at least sixty feet high,” he said.

“There’s your nightmare, Urs,” Yvete said. “We’ve got to get down to the basement before the tornado hits, and I bet you every single one of those doors is going to be locked or stuck or covered in slime.”

“I don’t care about the doors as long as there are stairs,” Benji said. “There have to be stairs, right?” 

Yvete and Urs glanced at each other and frowned.

“The only thing for it is to keep going and hope,” Urs said, “and when hope fails, there’s rope.”

This time the door opened easily, but, as if to answer Benji’s question, there were no stairs on the other side. 

“I can’t believe Ishtar does this for fun,” Yvete said and kicked the door. 

Ishtar was famous among the nightmare hunters who stalked the Plains of Ragnarok. Most people who fought on the Plains of Ragnarok at all did so only once or twice in their lives, drawn in by the challenge but chased off by the often tedious surreality of fighting nightmares. Ishtar treated it like a hobby, returning again and again, and, as far as anyone knew, she had never died.

“She doesn’t do it for fun,” Urs said.

“How do you know?” Benji asked.

“She told me,” Urs answered.

“I don’t understand how you can be so good at something you don’t like,” Yvete said. 

“It’s because she’s a goddess of dreams, isn’t it?” Benji asked. “Nightmares are just the other side of dreams.”

Urs gave Benji a critical look. “I can see why Ares’ guy recommended you for this,” he said.

“I thought it was just because I walked into him and spilled his wine,” Benji said.

“Ares’ people don’t just get revenge when they can do something else at the same time,” Urs said. “You might actually be able to understand this place. There are lots who can fight whatever comes at them, but being able to understand nightmares is a rare skill.” 

“Benji and Ishtar, warriors of Ragnarok,” Yvete said.

Urs started to examine the door again, but Yvete shooed him off. He conceded defeat and stepped back. Benji looked out the window and waited, certain that his help would be brushed aside, too. The tornado was getting so close it was hard to see. It looked like the whole world was whirling.

“You’d better move fast,” he said. 

Urs smacked him and pressed a finger to his lips, but Yvete didn’t need encouragement. She preferred to take a violent approach. When the door wouldn’t yield to her shoulder, she stuck her dagger in the keyhole and rattled it violently. To Benji’s surprise, this technique worked. With a click, the lock gave. Yvete turned the knob, but the door wouldn’t move. 

Urs drew his dagger and ran it along the gap where the door met the door jam. A couple of feet from the top of the door, his dagger hit metal.

“This one’s bolted from the other side,” he said. “We really are going to have to force it.”

It took seven tries before they finally succeeded in bursting through the door and met the long-awaited stairs. There was only a foot or so between the door and the first step of a staircase down. Benji and Yvete were able to save themselves a tumble, but Urs catapulted straight to the bottom, landed face-down, and didn’t move

As soon as she regained her balance enough to save herself from the same fate, Yvete flew down the stairs after him. Benji wasn’t far behind. 

“What is it?” Benji asked when they reached the bottom.

He was no medic, but Yvete didn’t hesitate in taking the role, slapping Urs’ face gently. Urs cringed. Benji and Yvete both breathed a sigh of relief, and then Yvete slapped him hard.

“Don’t you dare leave me in this place with a rube,” she said.

Urs sat up and rubbed his head. “Believe me. It wouldn’t be on purpose.” 

The storm hit the wall, and the tower shook.

“Tell me we’ve found the bottom,” Urs said.

The room they were in went all around the tower, and Benji nearly circled the thing before he found a window. 

“It looks like we’re on the ground,” Benji said. 

“And the stairs?” Yvete asked. “There are stairs down, right?”

Benji shook his head. The Plains of Ragnarok were a hot desert, but he swore the air went ice cold. 

“The best thing is to brace ourselves, then,” Urs said.

“And hope this isn’t one of those nightmares where you wake up just before you die,” Yvete added. “The best place to be is on the other side of the tornado from the tower. It’ll take the impact best.”

Yvete offered Urs a hand and pulled him to his feet, but he fell back down immediately. 

“It’s my ankle,” he said. “You go. I’m a tough old goat.”

“You’re a wounded lamb,” Yvete said. 

The storm started to peel the side of the tower like an onion. 

“There’s no time to drag him,” Benji said. 

“I think we’ll have to abort,” Yvete said. 

“No!” Urs protested. 

“You’re coming with us,” Yvete said. 

“Leave me here,” Urs said. 

Yvete pulled a red thread out of her pocket and quickly tied it around his arm in a complicated pattern that formed a diamond at the center of his wrist. Realizing what she was doing, Urs pulled away, but it was too late. The thread was thin, but the spell was stronger, and she had him firmly bound. 

“On the count of three,” she said. 

The warriors disappeared just as the tornado ripped through the wall.


End file.
